Here's How Much Apartment You Can Really Afford In NYC

NEW YORK — It's no secret that you get less for more in New York City's housing market, but budget-conscious renters are stuck with barely enough space for their elbows in three boroughs, a recent report shows.

The real estate website RentCafe examined how many square feet a renter could afford in the 100 most populous U.S. cities when making the local median monthly income and spending no more than 30 percent of those earnings on rent.

The results were bleak for New Yorkers. Renters get the least for their money in Brooklyn, where one could afford just 265 square feet of living space on the median income, the report shows. That's the smallest amount among the cities on the list and less than half the borough's average apartment size of 697 square feet, RentCafe found.

Manhattanites were barely better off — renters there could afford just 290 square feet on the median income despite the average apartment size coming in at 723 square feet, the report shows. The borough also has the nation's highest average rent at a whopping $4,113, according to RentCafe.

There's a little more room to breathe in Queens, where the median income can grab a renter 419 square feet, according to the report. But that's still barely more than half the average apartment size in the borough of 731 square feet, RentCafe says.

Typical renters could snag larger-than-average apartments on 30 percent of their earnings in just 14 of the cities RentCafe examined. The best deals can apparently be found in Gilbert, Arizona, where a renter could afford 1,174 square feet on the median income compared with the average apartment size of 962 square feet, the report shows.

RentCafe compiled the report using U.S. Census Bureau income data adjusted for inflation and rent price data from the Yardi Matrix, the website's sister company. Check out the table below to see how cities across the country stacked up, or read the full report here.